Skthveraachk could not see Hathan from the rear, the ‘aft’ she had been corrected, of the room. The bridge, the brain of the great metal unliving beast that the Commander now controlled. But the screens; the wide squares set at angles and turns, a facsimile of the windows of observation deck, gave her more than enough to watch.

She recognized, too, the blue shell thinker, Queen, whatever they were now. From the great space which housed their Wyverns and box-transports. Leant down, now, over the shoulder of a seated smaller male. There was no feeling of motion, her claws did not drag or skid across the deck, but upon the screen of stars and sky that great floating ring grew larger and larger. Details of the cuts and jagged edges of smoothed plates growing ever sharper, the central circle rotating with such speed that it was but blur of light already. The humanite seemed unphased, even the four ambers stood amidst the usual soldiers. They were her shadows everywhere, now. Accept, and proceed.

Different. New? The Queen had seen humanite interactions before, had watched the aliens assign tasks and perform their roles. Almost as much as the great wrought circle suspended ahead, they had become an unsettling marvel all over again after the Commander’s departure from the bivouac. It was the norm, expected, for a soldier to obey. They could call themselves soldiers, and Skthveraachk could not quite cease regarding them as such, but each of these aliens was a thinker in their own right. A Queen. The Lieutenant, a subordinate role to the Commander, called for an action. In the space of a half-beat, the other alien would have to stop, consider, evaluate, then choose whether to obey or refuse. Without scent. With little movement. With only the knowledge of that other specific individual, and perhaps the implication of their role, to base their judgement upon. It was a thousand, thousand meetings between Queens every bar of every measure. Any sane being would be driven wild and erratic. They continued their labors without hesitation.

A few breaths were inhaled. A few bodies tightened at the legs. Waves within the nothing, distortions where only starlight should shine. Like invisible claws and seized upon them, the spots of light dragged and grew until they seemed to stretch forever within the span of a length. A tunnel. A passage. Stars around them did not match those ahead, and the great spires jutting from across the Palamede’s hull went from shade to engulfed in brightness as they slid through the aperture. Her world. Her sky. The globe of green was barely a crescent on only the furthest side of monitors. Three of her eyes stayed fixed on the forward, the fore, the sicklier yellow-white light in the distance. But one. One, she kept on that sliver of the past.

th *^&**^&* holds the gate. Entering now.”> The sporepod forests. The great and hollow mountains. Triumvirate. Silent City. Composer. The Remembering. Slough Queen. A lifetime, fought for then. Fought for now. The sliver became but a gleam, the ship slid through the awning, and the gleam vanished entirely. A voyage of a million lengths, Hathan had said, in the whisper of a breath. All eyes forward. Volume accidental in the shout that followed.

“There are boulders crashing for your world!” Ambers practically leapt from the floor, two even groping for their lances at her outburst. Heads turned across the bridge, but Skthveraachk was transfixed. Locked to the titan stones falling from the sky under the glow of the unnatural sun, falling to the planet’s face. A great red planet, red and a pale white weave. Confusion on the bridge was replaced with sudden barking horks, their unpleasant laughter sounding from several corners. Hathan’s head swung around from the great central dais.

She was far too absorbed by her stricken regard to even think of inputting the translation. Like miniature planets in their own right, perhaps, though the infinite nothing made scale a confusing thing. Accept that worlds hung as though on single silken strands, very well. Why, and how, would three such celestial bodies happen to congregate in such a way? Information. She prepared to pursue the inquiry.

His tone was hard and immediate. His body snapped back to its place at lead. The Queen settled herself, though unable to let her gaze leave those great hanging orbs. Ignoring the ambers behind her reslinging their lances.

Chunk of the sanguine planet vanished, and in its place, jagged and twisted segments of stone. Hardstone. Metal, beams, spiraling lengths of cords, plating scorched and melted. Bodies? Yes. She could see an arm, a torso, a corpse in its entirety. Contorted and ruptured, like captured moments in time as they drifted. Their eyes, missing. Their necks puffed outwards. Most either torn by some unknowable force, or in pieces. Pieces mirroring the pieces of their ship, Skthveraachk realized. The most powerful of the humanite weapons, reduced to the castoffs of a finished hunt. The shell fragments and hollowed out innards. There was no desire in her to learn of what manner of conflict could take a marvel like a Palamedes, and sever it in half.

It was a softer response. A more dour recitation. The Queen heard the rustle of fabric as Commander stood.

th.”>

Without and within. She saw the female touch one of the consoles, heard her speak, but so too heard the music magnified, amplified through the walls and speakers of the bridge and even the rooms beyond. Not all moved. Those at their stations, those seated, remained focused. But of those standing, even the ambers behind her, all about the Queen did the humanites strike their hands to their heads. Gazing to the cold walls. The respect, she recognized. Perhaps aboard one of their destroyed vessels had been someone of importance, like their admirals? It was a strange custom, but no stranger than her kind’s to theirs, she supposed. She had never seen them eat their dead after all. Their arms fell. They returned to work. Pity to those not within the view of the Composer.

She kept her attention on those great, shattered behemoths. Trying to piece them together in her mind while the humanites conversed. Hathan had been kind, perhaps a touch needlessly so, in permitting her access to the bridge for the jump. Now, she felt out of place. Unnecessary. Focused on gaining as much information as she could before their descent to whatever battlefield awaited. Inputting names and terms to her growing lexicon.

“Received.” Skthveraachk had not expected to be called upon. She answered swiftly all the same, turning her self from the screen of bulbous and squashed bodies amidst the wreckage. Hathan waved fingers to the fore, and with a blip of green light, the half silhouette of another human grew from floor and descended from on high. A smaller, even whiter crested body than the last ‘admiral’ she had seen. The dragging follicles drooping from his chin and cheeks and head, in a shell that was hung empty-armed from his back.

Another slap of hand.

Skthveraachk did not consider herself an expert on humanite communication. She did not consider herself even well-versed. She did, however, consider herself capable of recognizing displeasure after persisting exposure. The Admiral bore no scent, but he was rank with displeasure.

Like the great central pillar of Hollowcore, the male’s features were chiseled and grave. The music of his words a contained, emerald sea. She tapped at the translator affixed to her head, accepting the suggested inputs despite their bizarre meanings.

The blue shells were clutching their hands tighter behind their backs. Even the ambers seemed uncomfortable, animate, shifting in place.

The Admiral’s shimmering hands in the false light began to tap. Drum, finger to finger, in fluid curving.

Less volume. More movement from the hands.

The room fell silent. Was that anger on the hairy humanite’s face? No. No, it was something different.

The Queen clacked her mandibles. Hard. Too hard, given the way a few of the officers and blues threw looks her way. It was not a lie. But it was not a truth. Though it had not been spoken to her, to hear the Hathan sing so easily of it was disturbing.

She was missing something. These pauses were growing unnatural.

Even smaller as he was, the way his body thrust forward made the Admiral seem oddly large. Stalwart. Sure.

It was not an answer. It was not a statement containing information pertinent to the Admiral’s query. Yet it caused, in the half of the face the Queen could see, the boney grimace to wrap pleased upward at edges of his mouth.

He waited. The Commander added nothing. The tapping of fingers resumed.

His laughter was dry, crude but of a sonorously pleasant depth.

Raising arm, the snap of recognition and angled hand was given, Hathan mimicking the movement immediately. The message was terminated. The exchange of Queens, with but sound and intent. It was only after the false image melted that she could again look upon the monitors, and the question of what power could shatter ships and violate the great vessels of the humanites was answered succinctly.

Ten? Twenty? They ranged in size, some three-quarters the size of the Palamedes while others looked as though the craft alongside them could swallow them whole. Some stretched long, lumbrite worms thick and far, while others seemed as though entire cuts had been made from their centers. Smooth rise and curve of their hulls dropping sharply to vacant squares upon which arches like those carried by Wyverns had been erected. Great hollow tunnels, like the lances the soldiers carried, scaled to inconceivable heights and protruding from notches in their protective carapaces in rows of five and five again. Their spires and sharp spikes thrust out, making the ships seem sometimes twice as large as they should be, almost like a fuzz of spurs. So many lights, shining from their bodies. So many colors, smeared in lines and in the sigils that made up their recorded memories. A floating collection of vessels to blot and mar the planet’s surface, black on red, great shadows in the infinite beyond. A single shot from a single cannon of a single vessel had ended her. Had unmade a nest that had stood for cycles. Skthveraachk tried to count the weapons she saw before her. She stopped when she reached her first hundred.

The Queen was thankful for the distraction.

It was as if the male had been traveling all rise, the way his breath fled him in a pressured wave. The thud of a body striking the seat erected at dais.

“I will join the first landings. They will need guidance.”

“Skthveraachk-Colony is known for our acumen, Hathan-Commander. We will soon be known for our adaptability, as well. I will depart for the transports.”

She rapped her claws on the deck, and began laborious process of turning herself about without striking her appointed her guards or ramming to wall. The doors slid, two of her ambers exiting for hall before the Queen herself managed to get head through the opening. Sounds from the bridge flowing out for just a few beats.

The hiss of the door was shrill as it latched close, but not quite enough to completely cut the last of the music from the bridge, pitch elevated.

Of all the things she had prepared for, it had been the scream that caught the colony off-guard the most. They had all clustered themselves around the landing site, the open-aired constructions of hardstone circles upon which Wyverns and transports lighted. A hundred? More like three. Male, female, pink, black, brown, topped with hazel or blonde or even red at times. The ramp slammed into ground, ambers rushed from their Wyverns to form perimeter, and a recoiling spasm rippled out as a visible wave from those nearest to those far as Skthveraachk and her children strode from the container. ‘Strode’ sounded more notable in her mind. Half tumbled, half slid, would have been more accurate. Each breath felt like it was missing a fifth of what was needed, each step made it feel like she needed to dig claws into the sanguine stones and dust coating the landing platform or risk floating off. Already confusion and concern were being called from those skittering down the ramps of their own transports, arranged in line of four.

“Ground unstable?”

“Uncertain. Unsteady. Dig in spurs.”

“Significant humanite presence. Thinking they have come to celebrate our arrival? Are we so fortunate?” It was a quick check, and just as quickly confirmed. The former Ghescktyeelh had naturally ensured he was on the first transports down. His query brought rapping of antennae, even as another drone misjudged a step and flipped onto its back. These humanites were not like those of the Palamedes, and broke striking resemblance to those she had killed before. With armored shells more suited to their full bodies, and many wearing helms with tubes running between the twin holes above their mouths to the boxes carried on their backs. They formed a semi-circle. There was nowhere to go once free of the transports. She signalled as hundreds of her children amassed.

“Ball up. Tighten and wait. Allied humanites. Superior vassal collective. Delvers. Scouts. Acquire terrain information.” Two delvers had been brought with the first wave. They hunkered and scrabbled claws into the dust, soaking their graspers and smearing them across their heads and tongues. Soldiers steepled and elevated as the scouts rose atop them, and data flowed down as topography was recorded. Narrow cliffs and canyon hundreds of lengths ahead, difficult to make out in the haze. Light was strange here, the world foggier than their own. Even scouts fought to discern details at sixty paces, soldiers could barely make out shapes at forty. Though it was a soldier who first noticed the twin ambers and blue shell approaching, their faces some of the only not in a gruesome state of warped wonder. Skthveraachk wormed to meet them.

From the bridge. The smiling female, who exchanged music perfectly matched to the Commander’s own. She was not smiling now. Stood harsh and angled.

“Are we not?” The scream. A screech that set her colony’s hairs raised at a pitch that caused one scout to topple clear off his tower as he tried to dampen the noise. It came from the ranks of soldiers in their red, splotchy shell casings seemingly matched to the terrain. A female who had been rushing from rows of erected square canvases just in time to hear the Queen speak. She had collapsed. It disturbed her people. It seemed to do more than disturb the looks they were receiving from the humanite mass. Lieutenant clacked her teeth.

“I will leave a trail for the others to follow. I am ready to follow you.” The humanite made a heady, throaty sort of noise. There was a band just above her lips, as had been on the ‘lesser-queen’ who had wished her well on her world. A band that had not been there on the Palamedes. She turned, and the ambers about her began to push back the mass of bodies. Unfriendly bodies. Unsure bodies. It took only two more beats and the swarming of her colony around her to make the realization. Another world. A different world. She accepted things now, so quickly and so easily; the Queen had to, to maintain cohesion. But it let the details slip by. The considerations vanish. It was not her world. It was theirs. She was the outsider now, in land they had claimed their own. Each tried to make sense of her, as she had when they arrived. Each set of eyes, a small prospective queen in their own right, wondering. Was it appropriate? Would it matter? She may never see any of them again. She could just as easily live alongside any of them for a long, long time. Directing the drones to continue following the Lieutenant, the Queen reared herself onto four legs. Folded her scythes. Bent her head, to see those nearest backing away while ambers cautiously fingered their lances. It was debasement. It was necessary. They were the superior. She wracked thoughts, and settled upon what had made their Admiral smile.

“I am Skthveraachk Queen of Skthveraachk-Colony. I am here to assist you. I am proud for the chance to show your people my species’ usefulness.” Volume had been adequate. Tremble was in her children as they felt her displeasure as she bowed her body down. She curled and dug her spurs into the buoyant ground. They considered. Each ran their private deliberations. The Lieutenant came to a halt ahead, waiting. Then, a slapping. A flapping. A fleshy, doughy sound as within the crowd, one of the humanites had begun to smack their hands together in ringing smacks. Another joined. And another. And the uncertainty, still present, gave way to a sea of white bone, glaring and snarling up to her as the noise of their whacking raised to meet barks and meaningless shouts of pleasure. The Queen fell back to all six, and quickened her gait to once more fall in behind the Lieutenant. Transports sending gusts of billowing red ash over them all.

Ramps, slopes, stairs that she took seven at a time had been worked into the terrain. The crowd of soldiers remained at the landing, where the bulk of her people continued to funnel from, but many followed at the edges and between the fabric cubes. One emerged, devoid of armor, a clinging black material coating him from neck to feet, and stared with mouth open.

“I remember well the feeling as I realized my species was not the only of intelligence. I was afraid. I was given no answers. I would have desired nothing more than to be told ‘We are here. We mean you no harm’. I am capable of giving that to your people.”

“I do not see the humor.”

Her music was not pleasant. It was not like on the Palamedes, relaxing and sure. It bore an edge and a jagged tip. The drones at Skthveraachk’s sides rattled their legs in growing unhappiness.

“Artillery. Armored Carriers. Fifteen AG-AC.” Her scouts continued to feed the information. “Shield emitters. Deactivated spire.” How common those spears had become, their silver and black points rising from the ground sixty, seventy lengths into the crimson sky. So red, this world. So bright. Composer, so peeling chilly too. Her breath wasn’t fogging, but each inhale was like sipping ice water. Digging her eyes into the Lieutenant’s exposed back, the Queen tapped mandibles.

“They are your enemies. Enemies of your Sovereignty and Emperor. Their deaths should bring you satisfaction, not humor.”

Not children, not sibling, not mate, not vassal; some other connection, some fond bonding.

“Your soldiers on my world performed their roles admirably. Very few frenzied and attempted to abandon their fellows even upon seeing the losses. They were exceedingly difficult to destroy.” The Hathan was fond of this one. She offered the compliment, baring her truth to the other despite the sadness of the situation. And was forced into another abrupt halt as the blue shell rounded, face showing anything but happiness.

A finger was thrust for her, a miniature barb raising. A flashing reminder of the Pod and the Queen, spending long measures being guided around her cell by same pointing guidance. Being trained into a good and obedient soldier who followed orders, herself. She felt her scythes begin to emerge. Clamping down on her carapace until the Lieutenant once more resumed her guidance through the scattered nest. Rows of the great lobbing weapons were set as lines, metal barriers guarded off pathways, and the flurry of activity as their onlookers kept distance, but not so distant that they could not wander their eyes over Queen or drones or soldiers. Message came that one had tried to reach and touch a menial, before an amber had thankfully pushed the soldier away.

“I am pleased that you do not have any … friends,” Repeating the word, it sounded ill on Skthveraachk’s shell. “Amongst the Coalition forces here, humanite. I would not wish to distress you further. They are all going to die, very soon. Yes.” Keeping her head angled downward, the tap of her antennae was a darker mirth. Perhaps it was the adrenal pumping already beginning, the hums from the soldiers as the built themselves already, feeling combat approaching. “I perhaps understand the humor. Your species stumbles upon my world, and takes it upon themselves to exterminate me. By surviving, I simply prove how difficult it is to see us eradicated, and so instead, I am set upon the very race who discovered me. My punishment for killing your kind; to be told I must kill more, and better, or be killed myself. Yes.” The Lieutenant was rigid enough that a prod seemed as though it would snap her in half. “Yes, I believe I understand. This is … funny.”

If the blue shell had intended to respond, any sense of it was lost under the hard blaring of sound and shout from all about them. Soldiers ceased their fawning attentions, focus upon her colony was discarded in favor of heavy footfalls to the silvery canvas cubes and further into the nest. Spires blazed alight, their blue emitters linking them together in first lines, then full covered triangles. In an instant, the red sky turned first blue as dome of energy washed like water pouring on stone down over the encampment, then green, as a distant searing ball arced upwards from beyond sight. And came crashing down to splatter out across the shield, fading away into nothing.

The ridge sloped, the walls of the cliff rising ahead. Shield extended near to its edge, but plenty of lengths remained exposed. Down that corridor? Mandibles flexed and dug. It would be a killing field of lance beams with nowhere to go. The cleared space was seen, tightness in the Lieutenant’s voice biting. It was all the direction given before the female lumbered away, her gait wide and pace quick. Liberating, in a sense, to begin considering each of the aliens their own colony. It allowed the Queen to accept the Hathan’s company, but find displeasure in this Lieutenant.

“Four observers. Elevated position, canyon wall.”

“Received.”

“Lay markers from landing to current location. Mark as temporary gathering point. Census soldiers, previous contact with humanites.” Only seven of the six hundred responded to the call. “Assign as leaders. Ensure cohesion. No attacks on nearby humanite forces under any circumstance. Even if being killed.”

“Received. Foreign entities within swarm bounds. Response?” The ambers were charged with keeping the peeled soldiers away from her, the drumbeat thumping as another set of vessels landed and more of her army emerged was already building a combat stupor. Feeling out, she found scout near the intrusion; a cluster of ambers, a floating throne, and a pale shelled Pod. Raising an arm, waving in Skthveraachk’s direction. Irrelevant. Irritation.

“Tolerate. Permit freedom of movement. They will not come within central ball.” She cut the link to the scout, turned it to the bulkier bodies. “Column will advance down canyon. Organize ranks. Smallest and drones at the head to absorb fire. Senior and largest in center. Reserves in the rear.”

“Spitters requesting assignment.”

“Standby. Unsuitable for moving engagement. Will assign if necessary once information is retrieved.” Even in the Palamedes, most of her colony had never been so close to a humanite before. Their smells, the memories of their attack, all that a drone had to operate on. Those with experience calmed and soothed the others. She selected a thinker and grouping of soldiers before making her way towards the ridge. It seemed as a mobile ship’s bridge, the table of untrue light and towering screens arranged in circle. Another impact on the shield above. A tremor through her colony. A reassuring thrum to quiet them. Alien world, alien enemy, alien weaponry; embrace. Accept. It was a battlefield, nothing more. Enemies to kill, nothing more. She knew how to fight. She had always known how to fight. She was here to fight. All else, superfluous. “Queen departing for hill twenty lengths from collective. Dispense orders. Continue tasking.”

The falling glow of green overhead was at first a line, a wound carved through the ever-blackening red sky, its tail a scarring discoloration that followed its descent. She could not see the stars yet, though hoped they would shine down on her even here, that perhaps the Composer could yet see her a million lengths from where she had been born. Humanite spire crackled as the impact was absorbed, and for just the faintest breath, she imagined what would occur should it fail. If the plasma broke through, struck a group of the ambers, or the Pod perhaps, and filled air with their screams. Non-hostile. Superior vassals. Skthveraachk was not here to kill them, but in the growing stomp and burgeoning music of battle’s preparation, it became necessary to remind herself of it. Serve. Obey. Adhere. Mind repeated the mantra as she made way past the alien forms. The horizontal slits of their mouths carved into heads. Their wiggling, touching, prodding graspers that despite softness, unsettled with their jellied nature. Their synthetic, manufactured shells of many colors. Their paired eyes and follicle strands hanging from head. Serve, obey, adhere her mind called as she ascended the hill to the table, laying out the canyon ahead. Hathan not yet present. Pod somewhere below, fiddling with the weapon that would soon bear her into battle. Serve. Obey. Adhere. Her claws dug deep into the blood-colored ground, and in the distance, the chorus of the music sung a clearer tune. A better tune. This ‘Coalition’ would be waiting for them through the great canyon. Humanites they did not serve. Humanites they would not obey. Humanites who merited no adherence. The blue and amber and red and white shells around them, they would follow. The figures at the end of that chasm? They would kill.

Kill. Kill. Kill.